422 PROCEEDINGS OE THE GEOLOOICAl SOCIETY. [May ] 0, 



1. On the Azoic and PALiEozoic E-ocks of Soxjtheen New Bruns- 

 wick. By G. P. Matthew, Esq. 



[Communicated by J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.E.S., F.G.S., Principal of M'Gill 

 University, Montreal.] 



[Plate XII.] 



Contents. 



I. 



Introduction. 



V. Upper Silurian. 



II. 



Laurentian Formation (Port- 



VI. Middle and Upper Devonian. 





land series). 



VII. Lower Carboniferous. 



III. 



Huronian Formation (Cold- 



VIII. Carboniferous. 





brook group). 



IX. General Kemarks and Conclu 



IV. 



Lower Silurian (St. John's 

 group). 



sions. 





I. Inteobttction. 



It is now twenty-two years since Dr. Abraham Gesner made a 

 geological survey of this province. 



The grand features recognized by him were the existence of a 

 great interior coal-basin, flanked on either side by more elevated 

 tracts of metamorphic and igneous rocks, and of a large Upper Si- 

 lurian area, coterminous with the northern boundary of the pro- 

 vince. 



Among the later observers who have laboured in New Brunswick 

 may be mentioued Principal Dawson, of M'Gill University, Mon- 

 treal, Dr. James Eobb, Prof. C. H. Hitchcock, late State Geologist 

 for Maine, and Prof. L. "W. Bailey, of the University of New Bruns- 

 wick*. 



At the time when Dr. Dawson's memoir on the Devonian Flora 

 was written, the sediment underlying the Devonian beds had been 

 examined only in the vicinity of the City of St. John, and, supposing 

 that they formed a connected series, he called them the '' St. John 

 Series," without attempting to fix their precise- age. 



When my own paper (Observations on the Geology of St. John 

 CO., New Brunswick) was written, we had learned to distinguish 

 the " Portland " (nos. 7 and 8 of Dawson's List) as an independent 

 series. But although a break was suspected to exist between the St. 

 John and Bloomsbury groups (no. 4, and nos. 5, 6, in part, of Daw- 

 son), a careful examination along the base of the latter did not reveal 

 its occurrence. Subsequent explorations further west confirmed the 

 suspicion, and, with the nearly simultaneous discovery of TrUobites, 

 threw new light upon the relations of the series in which they 

 occur ; but, until the study of these organisms was undertaken by Mr. 

 Hartt, the exact position of the series in the Lower Silurian form- 

 ation was not ascertained. 



This point having been determined for the base of the upper of 



* See Gesner's five Reports to the Legislature of New Brunswick ; a chapter by 

 Dr. Eobb in Johnstone's Eeport on ' Agricultural Capabihties of New Bruns- 

 wick ;' Dawson's Acadian Geology and Supplement ; Hitchcock's Eeport on the 

 Nat. Hist, and Geol. of the State of Maine ; Dawson's ' Precarboniferous Flora of 

 New Brunswick, Maine, and Eastern Canada,' Can. Nat. 1861 ; Dawson's ' Flora 

 of the Devonian Period in North-east America,' Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1862; 

 Bailey's ' Geology and Botany of New Brunswick,' Can. Nat. 1864 ; Dawson's 

 ' Floi-a of the Carboniferous Period in Nova Scotia,' Can. Nat. 1863, &c. 



